Monday, August 30, 2010

Cal State's Digital Marketplace Announces Pilot

The Digital Marketplace, an initiative of the California State University Office of the Chancellor, announced plans today to launch a pilot to license digital course content from Bedford/Freeman/Worth, Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Students will purchase their personal-use subscriptions for the digital content through their local campus bookstore. More from the press release:

“Offering faculty the choice of a licensing model gives them the option of finding the highest quality content at the lowest cost,” said Gerard L. Hanley, PhD., Senior Director of Academic Technology Services for the CSU. “The purpose of the Digital Marketplace is to provide everyone access to quality, affordable educational content. This is a wonderful example of an academic institution and publishers working together for the benefit of our students.”

“Wiley is pleased to join this venture to promote learning by providing students with quality products at the most affordable price points,” said Bonnie Lieberman, Senior VP and General Manager, Higher Education, Wiley.

“For the past several years, we have offered numerous low-cost options to professors and students, but we are continuously exploring new avenues, and we are excited about this new model for teaching and learning with digital materials,” said Tom Scotty, President of Sales, BFW Publishing Group.

"Pearson supports the efforts of instructors at CSU to explore the effective deployment of digital course materials that hold the promise of more effective learning,” said Don Kilburn, CEO of Pearson Learning Solutions.

“We are continuously looking for ways to deliver content to students in the format that is most engaging to them,” said Rik Kranenburg at McGraw-Hill Education.

“Cengage Learning is pleased to be a leader in CSU’s Digital Marketplace and we are committed to providing students a range of high quality, high value course content in formats and at price points to meet each student's budget and learning style,” said Rich Foley, Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Cengage Learning.

The pilot program will collect and analyze student and faculty user data during the fall 2010 term to learn more about usage and preferences for digital materials.

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Michael Cairns

Michael Cairns has served as CEO and President of several technology and content-centric business supporting global media publishers, retailers and service providers. He can be reached at michael.cairns@outlook.com and is interested in executive management and consulting, board and/or advisory positions. I am currently Managing Director with Digital Prism Advisors where we advise clients on digital and business transformation.

My career spans a wide range of publishing and information products, services and B2B categories and my operating and consulting experience has largely been with brand-name companies such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Macmillan, Inc., Berlitz International, AARP, R.R. Bowker and Wolters Kluwer.

I have served as a board member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and in addition to my responsibilities at R.R. Bowker, l also served as Chairman of the International ISBN Executive Committee.